Ray Tracing on an AMD Graphics Card beats nvidia

humbug · 23 Mar 2019 at 11:58

Gregster said:
Just googled and not seen a thing about previous versions of the Cryengine being able to do Raytracing. Even Crytek have made a big thing about how 5.5 is RT enabled and is better suited to the latest hardware.

Maybe I am missing something?

AthlonXP1800 already posted about that a few posts back, the fist engine to have Ray Tracing was Cryengine 3.8.3 released in August 2015.

Cryengine 5.5 is already out, has been for 3 Months, are you going off what some review sites are saying? Crytek didn't say anything, some reviewers interpreted what it meant assuming nVidia invented it.

This is Cryengine 3.8.3, i recorded this yesterday.

Gregster · 23 Mar 2019 at 12:08

humbug said:
AthlonXP1800 already posted about that a few posts back, the fist engine to have Ray Tracing was Cryengine 3.8.3 released in August 2015.

Cryengine 5.5 is already out, has been for 3 Months, are you going off what some review sites are saying? Crytek didn't say anything, some reviewers interpreted what it meant assuming nVidia invented it.

This is Cryengine 3.8.3, i recorded this yesterday.

https://docs.cryengine.com/display/SDKDOC1/EaaS+3.8.3

Just looked through that and can't see where Raytracing has been added? Looked at your vid yesterday and whilst it looks ok, it doesn't look like Raytracing to me but more reflection mapping but then again, not my skillset, so could be wrong. I also remember back in the olden days when the Amiga was released and Raytracing was a thing back then (guessing about 1987) but of course, not really applicable with the hardware available at the time. I also don't see NVidia making claims of inventing Raytracing but more providing the hardware to enable this tech.

Whilst I am sure you know more than tech journalists also, realistically, why is it only now RT is starting to take off?

humbug · 23 Mar 2019 at 12:13

Gregster said:
https://docs.cryengine.com/display/SDKDOC1/EaaS+3.8.3

Just looked through that and can't see where Raytracing has been added? Looked at your vid yesterday and whilst it looks ok, it doesn't look like Raytracing to me but more reflection mapping but then again, not my skillset, so could be wrong. I also remember back in the olden days when the Amiga was released and Raytracing was a thing back then (guessing about 1987) but of course, not really applicable with the hardware available at the time. I also don't see NVidia making claims of inventing Raytracing but more providing the hardware to enable this tech.

Whilst I am sure you know more than tech journalists also, realistically, why is it only now RT is starting to take off?

https://docs.cryengine.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=25535599

This GI solution is based on voxel ray tracing and provides following effects:

By default, the GI system released in 3.8.1 actually only exposes a simplified sub-set of the more advanced GI system, which supports features like multiple bounces and ray traced specular lighting.

The demo was run on a Vega 56 at 4K, on the already released Cryengine 5.5.

There is no RT enable in that or any Cryengine, its simply doing what its been doing since 3.8.3

Colonel_Klinck · 23 Mar 2019 at 12:22

Does anyone actually use RT? I play BFV a bit and just don't bother. The graphical benefits which tbh are hard to spot when gaming just aren't worth the FPS hit.

Gregster · 23 Mar 2019 at 12:26

humbug said:
https://docs.cryengine.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=25535599

The demo was run on a Vega 56 at 4K, on the already released Cryengine 5.5.

There is no RT enable in that or any Cryengine, its simply doing what its been doing since 3.8.3

Fair one and thanks for the clarification. Surprised this is the first time of hearing about it mind, as it is something that has always peaked my interest.

Rroff · 23 Mar 2019 at 12:27

Gregster said:
https://docs.cryengine.com/display/SDKDOC1/EaaS+3.8.3

Just looked through that and can't see where Raytracing has been added? Looked at your vid yesterday and whilst it looks ok, it doesn't look like Raytracing to me but more reflection mapping but then again, not my skillset, so could be wrong. I also remember back in the olden days when the Amiga was released and Raytracing was a thing back then (guessing about 1987) but of course, not really applicable with the hardware available at the time. I also don't see NVidia making claims of inventing Raytracing but more providing the hardware to enable this tech.

Whilst I am sure you know more than tech journalists also, realistically, why is it only now RT is starting to take off?

I'm not upto speed on the exact details but they've had a voxel based implementation that is quasi ray tracing for awhile - like the video I posted a few times of something I programmed it uses some tricks to do one pass extremely quickly but it is quite limited in terms of true ray tracing. I believe they've added some new features so it can do nicer reflections, etc. but it is still a long way from the holy grail of ray tracing.

humbug · 23 Mar 2019 at 12:30

Gregster said:
Fair one and thanks for the clarification. Surprised this is the first time of hearing about it mind, as it is something that has always peaked my interest.

Its a blessing because now everyone is talking about it, thanks to nVidia, hopefully now other will pull their fingers out of their behinds.

humbug · 23 Mar 2019 at 12:31

Rroff said:
I'm not upto speed on the exact details but they've had a voxel based implementation that is quasi ray tracing for awhile - like the video I posted a few times of something I programmed it uses some tricks to do one pass extremely quickly but it is quite limited in terms of true ray tracing. I believe they've added some new features so it can do nicer reflections, etc. but it is still a long way from the holy grail of ray tracing.

Real time reflection have been in Cryengine for just as long as the lighting, its the same technology, i have a video for that too if you would like?

willhub · 28 Mar 2019 at 08:35

When can one try Ray Tracing on GTX1080?

Sargatanas2511 · 28 Mar 2019 at 09:46

willhub said:
When can one try Ray Tracing on GTX1080?

Now, in a very basic and underwhelming way.

chrcoluk · 28 Mar 2019 at 10:15

Over time software RT will improve, RT we have now in games is optimised for RTX cards, but RT optimised for other cards will of course work better for those cards than the current RT.

Wrinkly · 28 Mar 2019 at 13:21

willhub said:
When can one try Ray Tracing on GTX1080?

I think the driver lands on April 4th.

Rroff · 28 Mar 2019 at 13:25

chrcoluk said:
Over time software RT will improve, RT we have now in games is optimised for RTX cards, but RT optimised for other cards will of course work better for those cards than the current RT.

Over time not doubt it will improve - but the big hurdle for Ray Tracing is still the same - CPUs are not efficient for the kind of processing RT makes heavy use of and one of the big advantages of real Ray Tracing is that you can just plug it in and leave it to do its thing - something that can't be done with these software approaches that need to use a lot of special casing to avoid massive slowdowns or quality issues.

Current or close future iterations of current CPU architectures just aren't a good approach for this - even something crazy like a 256 core, 512 thread CPU would be a poor substitute for a much smaller and cheaper bit of dedicated hardware.

A big bulk of ray tracing is vector addition, subtraction and intersection tests, etc. and a fair bit of square root for things like lengths (depending on your approach) a lot of that has significant overhead when done on a CPU in a general purpose pipeline versus how you could batch it up on dedicated hardware with much less overhead.

willhub · 28 Mar 2019 at 13:40

Just a quick thought, why are CPU's only double threaded, why not 3 or 4 threads?

humbug · 28 Mar 2019 at 15:59

willhub said:
Just a quick thought, why are CPU's only double threaded, why not 3 or 4 threads?

Multiple threads increase the efficiency of the cores, too many just wouldn't make a difference, two increase it by about 25% 3 or 4 will probably not make any difference.

Rroff · 28 Mar 2019 at 16:04

willhub said:
Just a quick thought, why are CPU's only double threaded, why not 3 or 4 threads?

You mean as in terms of SMT or hyper-threading?

humbug · 28 Mar 2019 at 16:06

Rroff said:
You mean as in terms of SMT or hyper-threading?

Same thing.

d_brennen · 28 Mar 2019 at 16:27

Some workloads benefit, some don't. Intel and AMD have put the extra transistors to work elsewhere and IBM have a much higher ASP for their silicon

willhub · 28 Mar 2019 at 16:36

Imagine an i7 Quattro. 8*4

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 28 Mar 2019 at 18:03

willhub said:
Just a quick thought, why are CPU's only double threaded, why not 3 or 4 threads?

There are CPUs which do have 4 threads per core,but they are not X86 and were designed for server and supercomputer use.